Barbara Greer

by Stephen Birmingham

  ‘Oh,’ Barbara said. ‘Then you heard about that.’

  ‘Hear about it? Goodness me, it’s been the talk of Locustville if you ask me!’ She stopped abruptly. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs. Greer, honest I am. What a terrible thing! And what a terrible story to print in the paper.’

  ‘Yes,’ Barbara said.

  ‘Of course I’ve got a theory,’ Flora said. ‘I’ve got a theory about why they write such things in the papers—not that I think a single word of it is true! Want to know what my theory is?’

  ‘Yes, Flora, what is your theory?’ Barbara asked.

  ‘It’s Communists. They’re the ones to blame. They’re the ones that print those sort of things about decent people like yourself, Mrs. Greer. They’re against our American capitalistic system, so they try to print things like that—just anything they can think of—to make folks think there’s something bad about wealthy folks like yourself, Mrs. Greer. Now I know for a fact that there’s Communists in this town, more Communists than you could shake a stick at, and they’re out to get the decent people. I could name you names, but I won’t. They’re the ones Mr. J. Edgar Hoover should be out to get, Mrs. Greer. He should get them and string them up by their toes. They’re trying to get us all turned over to Soviet Russia, that’s what they want—so they’re printing dirty stories in the papers like the one about you, and they’re doing all the talk that’s going on in this town. That’s my theory, and I said the same thing to my sister on the phone …’

  ‘Yes,’ Barbara said. ‘Well, thank you, Flora.’ She handed her the cheque.

  Then, after Flora left, she played with Dobie and Michael for a while. Then she got them into their pyjamas and read to them the story of The Little Engine That Could.

  ‘When’s Daddy coming home?’ Dobie asked her as she tucked the covers around him.

  ‘Soon,’ she said. ‘Perhaps tonight.’

  ‘Can I stay up?’

  ‘No. But if it’s not too late, perhaps I’ll wake you up …’

  She kissed them goodnight.

  Then, alone, she went into the living room and lighted the lamps. She still wore the black dress she had worn to the funeral, but she was too tired to change. She realised that she had had nothing to eat since breakfast that morning, but she didn’t feel hungry. She sat on the white sofa. The room looked comfortable and clean, as it always looked. Indeed, it was hard to believe that she had ever really left it. Nothing was changed. Behind the fireplace screen she could see the white scraps of paper among the ashes where she had tossed them, angrily, on Saturday after tearing up the note about the garbage cans. She waited and wondered if he would come.

  Later—it was nearly ten o’clock—she heard a car drive in and knew that it was Carson’s taxi, and that he had come. She waited. She heard him open the front door with his key, step inside and set his suitcase down in the hall. He came and stood in the doorway. He looked haggard and tired, in need of a shave. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Well, here I am.’

  ‘Hello, Carson,’ she said.

  He came and sat down in the chair opposite her. ‘Two times across the Atlantic inside of a week,’ he said. ‘A miracle of the air age.’

  ‘I understand you phoned here on Monday.’

  ‘Yes. Someone had been trying to call me Sunday night. I thought it might have been you.’

  ‘It was me. I called the Dorchester, but you weren’t there.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I was at another place, nowhere near as fancy.’

  ‘But the Dorchester was on your itinerary.’

  He smiled. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s the system. You find the cheapest place. It’s one of the tricks of the trade, I’m afraid. I’m sorry—if I’d known you might call I’d have left the number with them, but I didn’t think of that till later.’

  ‘You never told me about this system.’

  ‘No. It’s just one of the ugly facts I wanted to keep from you. There were so many things you hated about Locustville.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I see.’

  ‘Did you think I was off in some boudoir in the West End?’ he asked her.

  ‘Well, I wondered.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again.

  ‘Woody called you then?’

  ‘Yes. That’s why I came.’

  There was a silence. ‘Can I fix you a drink?’ she asked. ‘Something like that?’

  ‘No thanks,’ he said. ‘I just had one, actually.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes. I would have been here earlier, but I stopped by the office—to explain why I was back. Jesse Talbot was there and—well, Jesse insisted on taking me out to a bar and buying me a drink. I didn’t want to go, but he sort of insisted.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Jesse Talbot …’

  ‘Yes. So I sort of know the story …’

  ‘Oh,’ she said.

  ‘Yes. It’s—well, it’s too bad, Barbara.’

  ‘What did Jesse say?’

  He stared at his open hands. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Jesse was very nice. Jesse is a nice guy—I really like him a lot. Jesse is a gentleman. And Jesse told me, Jesse said—well, first he told me the story which I hadn’t heard, though Jesse thought perhaps I had—and he told me that he didn’t believe it. That nobody who really knew you, and knew me, really believes it, but, as Jesse said, that wasn’t the point. The point was that Locustville is a small town and that the company plays an important part in the life of the town, and that—because of this and things like that, community relations and all that business—I would be doing a disservice to the company by staying. And he gave me the opportunity to resign.’

  ‘Oh, Carson.’

  ‘Yes. That’s about it.’

  ‘I’m sorry!’

  ‘Yes. Well, I’m sorry, too, of course—but you don’t need to be. It isn’t really your fault, Barbara, because the point is—nobody believes the story, nobody who knows us, and I don’t believe it either.’

  ‘Carson,’ she said, ‘the point is that the story is true.’

  He looked at her.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that makes a difference, doesn’t it? Especially for me—and for you. The story is true, every word of it, every word the paper said. I—’ she said. ‘No—don’t interrupt. I’ve been listening, all day, every day—since it happened—to all of them, at home, saying it isn’t true, it couldn’t be true, it’s a terrible lie—saying it wasn’t my fault, making excuses for me, blaming it on someone else, on themselves! And I’m sick of it, I can’t bear it. I’m sick of all the excuses and the blaming it on others—leaping in, trying to save me and my poor reputation. Because it’s true, Carson, the story is true. I’m responsible for what happened. I killed him.’

  ‘You mean you had an affair with him?’

  ‘Going to—I was going to. I made the date with him, to meet him at the guesthouse. Oh, at the last moment, yes—I changed my mind. When I got there, I changed my mind. It was too late then to change my mind. I might as well have done it then, because I’d really done it long before—committed adultery—because I’d been unfaithful to you, in my mind, considering it, making all the plans. Why was I going to do it? I don’t know—there’s no excuse. Oh, I had dozens of excuses—I made all the excuses. I told myself that it was because Peggy was being such a bitch to him, and driving him, and destroying him—and I told myself I didn’t want to see him hurt. And I told myself that it was because I was lonely, and bored, and because you were away all the time, and because I hated Locustville so much. And I told myself it was because of the way everything has become at the farm—all of them tearing at each other’s throats, like wolves, and because my father’s turning into a drunkard and my mother is a shrew and Billy is a fool, and because I told myself that I might just as well go along with them as I always have, and be just as predatory and awful as they are! And I told myself the opposite, too—that I was a wonderful, beautiful, true, honest woman and that any man would be the better for my having offered my beautiful bo
dy to him. And, oh, yes. Yes, I had one more excuse. Jealousy. I called you, you see—and you weren’t there. And I thought, if he’s out somewhere having fun, then why can’t I? But I’ll tell you something else—something more important. This wasn’t something recent, something that just happened. It didn’t begin this past weekend. It began two years ago, when I first met him—and it would have happened then, as long ago as that—it almost happened, would have happened, one night before they were married when he and I were alone in the house one evening and you were off at Cousin Billy’s house for the bachelor party, watching Billy’s sex movies! It would have happened then—he was there in my room and I was all ready for it—but we were interrupted. Somebody came home! And ever since, all the time in between, we’d both been plotting, planning ways to do it, and I’d been thinking up all the excuses I had for doing it. But the thing was, there wasn’t any excuse, or any reason. I wanted it just because I wanted it—the way a child wants something. The way Dobie wants something of Michael’s and takes it, that’s the way I wanted it. So now you see the kind of woman I am.’

  He sat there, staring at her. Then he said, ‘Well—I’m glad you told me, Barbara.’

  ‘Yes.’ She stood up and walked to the window and looked out. ‘Yes, I’m glad I told you, too. You can’t believe what it’s been like—listening to them, Mother, Father, even Peggy—saying that they’d never believe it as long, as they lived. Saying that their sweet, darling, beautiful little girl could never, not possibly, do such a thing. Saying it—but suspecting, I suppose, all along that it probably was true. Why was the guesthouse all lighted up, with cocktails poured, and ready for a rendezvous at midnight? But never mind, they said—it couldn’t be true, it was all someone else’s fault. Thank God I’ve told you. And don’t tell me you don’t believe it.’

  ‘You know,’ he said softly, ‘it’s funny, really. Do you know that I really don’t remember much about him? If you asked me to describe him now, I couldn’t do it. Tall, yes, and rather dark—but that’s about all. When Flora told me he was dead, I thought—Barney. What does he look like? I didn’t know. I guess he never made much of an impression on me. I remember him being around, there, at the wedding—all that. But I guess I never really noticed him too much. I don’t believe I ever exchanged more than two or three words with him.’

  ‘Tell me you believe it.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I believe it.’

  ‘Good!’ She pressed her palms against the wide glass. ‘It was just—just that I wanted him, the way a child wants a toy. And I’ll tell you more—even more. I’ve always been like that. True, I’ve never, actually, physically been unfaithful to you. That much I can say. “Not since we were married,” as the expression goes. But that isn’t because I’ve had any moral feeling about it. No—you’ve just been lucky. Because I’ve always been this way. That year I was away, for instance—that year Nancy and I spent in Hawaii—you and I were practically engaged at that point, weren’t we? And you were in the Army. That year there were several. There were two Navy boys, Charlie and Charlie—the gold-dust twins as Nancy and I used to say. And there was a terrible delinquent boy who hung out on Waikiki Beach, and stole and slept with rich women for a living. And I wrote you such sweet and lovely letters to Camp Polk! And then my beach boy rang the bell and I let him in, and sent him home later with carfare and a little extra! So you see!’ She turned and faced him fiercely. ‘You see what I am! I’m no different from Nancy! I’m an immoral woman! What are you going to do with me?’

  Very quietly, he said, ‘If you sit down, I’ll tell you.’

  She went to the sofa again and sat down. For a moment or two she faced him, her eyes bright and defiant. Then she put her hands to her face. ‘Oh, Carson. Please—please don’t be kind to me.’

  He stood up, went to the sofa, and sat down beside her. ‘I’m going to be kind to you,’ he said, ‘because you’re my wife and I love you very much. Now tell me something …’

  ‘What? What is it?’

  ‘Do you still love me?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think I do, but I don’t know.’ She looked up at him again. ‘Do you know what terrifies me?’ she asked. ‘I’m terrified that I’m not even the kind of woman who just has affairs—but the kind of woman who has to have affairs to be happy, who always has to have someone else besides her husband, a secret one somewhere. There are women like that, aren’t there? And if I’m like that, Carson, it means that Barney really helped keep you and me together for the last two years—and not the rules. It means that having him there, in Burketown, to think about was something I needed in some crazy way to sustain my end of our marriage. And if that’s the kind of person I am, what is there to hold you and me together now that he’s dead?’

  ‘Nothing, unless you still love me,’ he said.

  ‘But I don’t know if I do.’

  ‘But you think you do …’

  ‘Yes. Oh, yes …’

  ‘That’s all I wanted to know,’ he said, and his voice shook slightly. ‘Now listen—please listen to me.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tonight, after talking to Jesse, coming here in the taxi, I had one idea.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I don’t know if it would work. Or if it would be possible. But I thought I might talk to your father, or to your cousin Billy, or whoever’s in charge up there.’

  She straightened up. ‘What about?’

  ‘A job.’

  ‘A job? What sort of a job?’

  ‘A job with the paper company.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ she said. ‘You’re not serious.’

  ‘Yes I am,’ he said.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I’ve got to get some sort of job. Perhaps they can use me. Besides, I think we ought to go to Burketown.’

  ‘I’ll never go back there. I couldn’t.’

  ‘But I think that’s what we should do,’ he repeated.

  ‘Why? Why do you think we should?’

  ‘Maybe they don’t need another salesman. But if they do, it will be a job—’

  ‘There are hundreds of other jobs.’

  ‘Yes, but there are other reasons.’

  ‘What? What reasons are there?’

  ‘Well, one is that if they hired me perhaps I could do something for the company. At least I’d be in a position to try. From what I gather, it’s been pretty badly managed. They’re up to their necks in mortgages. I owe it to your family at least to try.’

  ‘Why? What do you owe them? You owe them nothing!’

  ‘I do, as a matter of fact,’ he said. ‘I’ve never told you this, but it was your grandfather who helped me get this job—here, in Locustville.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes. He helped a great deal. It was through his influence.’

  ‘Why didn’t you ever tell me that?’

  ‘I suppose it was because I was ashamed of it,’ he said. ‘Still, it’s the truth.’

  ‘Well, what difference does that make? He’s dead.’

  ‘And there’s another, even more important reason—the main reason.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘I think we should go back there for your sake,’ he said. ‘That’s why I’d be willing to take almost any job they offered me, even if it wasn’t a selling job. For instance, I was thinking—they might even let me have Barney’s job.’

  Very softly she said, ‘Why do you say it’s for my sake? I hate it there.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘It’s not something that I want to do, either. I dread it, too, just as much as you do. It probably won’t be pleasant or fun or anything like that. But after this—after what’s happened—with this scandal and with it involving you—I think the worst thing in the world that you could do would be to run away somewhere and try to hide from it. The best thing would be to go back, and face it, and live with it—and show everybody that you can live with it. And I’ll be there helping you show them. And it’s more than just what effect
it would have on what other people think. It’s mostly the effect that it would have on you, and what you eventually come to think of yourself.’

  ‘No,’ she shook her head. ‘No. I don’t understand you. And I don’t care. Because I’ll never to back there, and that’s all there is to it.’

  ‘But you’ve got to,’ he said. ‘It’s what will give you your maturity.’

  ‘My maturity. Don’t you see—there’s something wrong with me. Something was left out of me. Maybe it’s the ability to mature. I should have matured, but I didn’t. And it’s their fault—they kept me from growing up. I know that now—something I never knew before. That’s why I’m never going back.’

  ‘I used to think that marriage was a very simple thing,’ he said. ‘I used to thing that being married would mean that everything got simpler, and all the problems got smaller and easier. But that isn’t true. The opposite is true. Things get harder, and it’s doing the biggest and the hardest things, being able to do them, forcing yourself to do them, that makes it work out in the end …’

  ‘No, no. I can’t, that’s all. Look,’ she said, ‘I own a few shares of paper company stock and Peggy would like nothing better than to get her hands on them. I can sell my stock to her, Carson, and it would give us a little money to go on. We could move somewhere, far away, and start over again.’

  ‘No,’ he said. That’s the thing we can’t do.’

  ‘And, with that money, there’d be enough so you wouldn’t have to work for a while—you wouldn’t have to take the first job that comes along.’

  ‘No,’ he said again.

  She stood up quickly and walked across the room. ‘Then you’ll have to go alone,’ she said. ‘I won’t go with you.’

  ‘Of course there’s no assurance it would work. I can’t promise you it would work. But the thing we’d have to do is try. And I don’t mean we’d have to stay in Burketown for ever, either. Perhaps a year, perhaps two years. As long as it takes.’

  She stood with her back to him. ‘Didn’t you hear what I said?’ she asked him quietly. ‘I said you’ll have to go alone. I won’t go back there with you.’